


Just More of the Same

by bravelikealady



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Destiel - Freeform, Post-Episode: s05e22 Swan Song, Swan Song, abuse acknowledgement, not wincest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 15:17:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6990766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bravelikealady/pseuds/bravelikealady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Adam are in the ground and the world spins on. Dean rides alone now, but for grief and guilt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just More of the Same

**Author's Note:**

> There will be no Wincest. John Winchester is acknowledged as abusive. Comments with complaints about either of these things will be deleted.

> _ "...no apocalypse, no paradise, just more of the same." _

\-----

There is nothing to do but move. 

 

The angel left on the drive over and Dean can see that no one is home here at 2194. 

 

He’s using the iPod hook up Sam installed nearly a year ago. He remembers how much he hated it, a symbol of the ease with which Sammy moved on when the hounds had taken him, concrete proof that his little brother wouldn’t think twice about breaking the commandments of John Winchester, commander, king, judge, jury, executioner. He wonders if his admittedly dramatic rejection of it hurt his brother’s feelings.

 

The knife of guilt his father put in his ribs so long ago twists once again. The pain is white hot and nauseating. 

 

_ Sammy…  _

 

His cheek is wet. With one hand he roughly brushes away the tears, the thumb of his other hand busy being gnawed by nervous mouth. 

 

_ When mountains crumble to the sea _

_ there will still be you and me…  _

 

The song fades out. 

 

The swaggered bass of “Heartbreaker” sweeps in, taking Dean by surprise. He isn’t used to B sides unceremoniously fusing with A. Zeppelin II was one of the cassettes he’d swiped from his father when he was set out on his own, to die for his mother all alone, captain of his own doomed ship. Plant and Page had never not needed his help continuing on.

He turns the ignition and the rumble and pur of the Impala rise like nothing has changed. Like she knows where Bobby is. Like Sam and Adam aren’t sealed in hallowed ground, writhing in hell. Dean looks over his right shoulder, gripping the leather seat tighter than he ever has, desperate to focus on making his way through the salvage yard and not on the grief roaring in his chest, the failures whispering in his mind.

 

_ Some people cry and some people die _

_ By the wicked ways of love _

_ I'll just keep on rollin' along _

_ With the grace of the Lord above _

 

\---

He watches the sun come up, laying on the hood and against the window. He brought a six pack of beer but he hasn’t opened one. For six hours he hasn’t opened one. The sky was deep purple when he got here, turned to black as he screamed and cried. It was grey when he lay in the grass defeated. And now, lying on the hood, he watched it turn pale pink, ‘til the orange swallowed it whole.

 

_ This is my heaven, _ he says to no one in particular.

 

Dean tries but he cannot find the figure of Sam, a child untouched by the realities of hunting, a boy with boy blood, not a man called by Lucifer, hooting and hollering under the crackle and fizz of fireworks. He tries to remember the way it made him feel at least, to tell his father to fuck off, to steal those fireworks, to take Sammy from his bed, and make him smile… a fourth of July, like everybody else… 

 

But the air is cold, unforgiving. The only thing he feels is dead, but he isn’t. Sam is dead. And he isn’t.

 

Samuel Winchester is in hell and Dean Winchester reaches for a beer, desperate for a poor man’s heaven.

 

\--------

Bobby singer has called Dean’s old phone 12 times. He paid the bill, keeps it on, but not for Bobby. Every time it rings he lies to himself. Every time it’s Bobby he tells himself how stupid he is. Sometimes it sounds like his dad telling him that, but he’s dead too.

 

_ He’s right. One job. I had one job and I fucked it all up. _

 

He doesn’t call Bobby back and he uses a new phone for any business he needs to attend to… credit card fraud, false identities, he continues to live like a hunter. 

 

A hunter who drinks. Drinks more than the old Dean. He loses days at a time. Wakes to hotel managers pounding on his door at noon,  _ you were supposed to be out by 11, Mr. Holt _ , and scrambles, sun-blinded to his car, to the next spot… then he is Mr. Wilson, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Reeves, Mr. Cain… then he forgets why he was moving at all. He rents a room for two weeks straight. Hopes it buys him enough time to drink himself to death, to stay gone no matter how hard they knock.

 

He has upgraded to a months long cabin rental when the old phone rings and it is someone who needs help. It turns out to be a trap by Bobby. He gets to kill nothing and save no one. Bobby hollers and he tries to listen. But he’s gone. 

 

It’s a few days later and several more bottles of Jack before he registers how angry Bobby was when he left, that Bobby was crying.

 

It makes him feel like shit but what else is new?

 

He adds it to the list of ways he’s a waste of space.

 

\---

It’s been three months, to the hour. 

 

He has no place to mourn for Sammy, no body, so he visits the memorial erected for his mother. Not a body there either. He digs his father’s dog tags out of the dirt. 

 

If Dean was a monster, a demon, he got it from John. He knew the truth of that now. 

 

He cries like a child, his back against the headstone, holding himself, trying to remember how it felt to be cradled by his mama. He tells her he’s sorry, for being born, for John, for letting Sammy die. He talks to her for hours. He wonders if there’s any way she’s listening.

 

\-------

That night at the cabin he stares in the mirror. He looks a thousand years older. He doesn’t recognize himself. More freckles, from the sun in the graveyard he guesses, weird… that’s more like Mary. That almost makes him happy. 

 

He pours all the liquor down the sink. Opens the beer to do the same, but caves.  _ I ain’t no saint _ . He needs something to make sure he doesn’t feel.

 

Dean isn’t sure if it has been hours or days when he wakes with a start, sweating, shaking, but he’s sure his body is desperate for the liquor he washed down the sink. He wraps himself tighter in the blankets, trying to ignore the ache all over. He screams into his pillows.

 

This goes on for a day and a night and as the sun rises he thinks his body might finally succumb to sleep. He thinks he hears something.

 

“Cas?”

  
It is less of a question and more of a prayer.


End file.
